The Importance of Blockchain to Supply Chains (Part 2 of 2)

We noted in our prior post that underlying the cryptocurrency called “bitcoin” is what, in the long run, may be the more important element at play here: the blockchain. Our prior post quotes The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims’ fine explanation of the concept. Now we’ll look at some important applications of blockchain technology.

In logistics, Walmart already uses a blockchain to list for sale over a million items, including chicken and almond milk, that provides its supply chain with traceability all the way forward and backward from source to sale.

Both efforts are expanding rapidly, and other companies cited by Mims include Kroger, Nestle,Tyson Foods and Unilever.

A company called Everledger was started in 2014 with the intent of creating a blockchain that traces every certified diamond in the world. It already has over 2 million diamonds in its registry, and adds another million or so per year. Everledger records 40 measures of each stone, lending it traceability “from when it’s pulled from the earth to the day it’s purchased by a consumer.” Every participant in that chain from miner to retailer maintains a node with a copy of the database in the blockchain.

A company in Israel puts internet-connected sensors on pallets and uses business intelligence analytics to determine when and where items could be damaged. Blockchain participants can record every stage of the package’s journey via package, pallet and shipping container.

Even whole countries are adopting blockchain. Dubai intends to be “the first blockchain powered government in the world by 2020.” By moving its central record of all real estate transactions onto a blockchain, it will be faster and easier to transfer property titles, for example.

As blockchain technology becomes more widely accepted and integrated into supply chains, it has the potential, as Mims notes, to be a “fundamental enabling technology,” similar to how new data transmission standards across networks made the internet we know today possible. It could one day underlie everything from “how we vote to whom we connect with online to what we buy.”

That being said, it’s wise to recognize that the current bitcoin craze is merely one application of the blockchain technology. Clearly, much more will be, and is, possible through blockchain. Bitcoin may — or may not — be here to stay; but blockchain seems to have all the merits and rapid adoption of a technological foundation that could change the way businesses run.